Readers are always asking us to recommend a digital camera safe for kids. It is exciting when your kid starts to get bitten by the photography bug. It is time to give him or her a camera. For small hands, you need big buttons and easy to understand and use controls. You also need something tough enough to survive little accidents and bumps. Enter the Nikon COOLPIX S30 [QuickPrice Check], aimed squarely at young children.

The Nikon Coolpix S30 features 10.1 MP (1/3-in. CCD), 3x optical zoom (29.1-87.3 mm equiv.), closeups to 5cm, and is built to resist shock when dropped from heights of up to 80 cm (2.6 ft), to resist water up to depths of 3m (10 ft), and resist dirt, making it safe (enough) to use at the pool and around water. It accepts two AA batteries. Alkaline batteries should be good enough for approx. 240 shots and Lithium batteries for approx. 700 shots.Continue Reading »

‘Forms’ is a multiscreen digital artwork commissioned by the National Media Museum for the exhibition In the Blink of an Eye: Media and Movement, which is part of the Cultural Olympiad programme. Forms responds to the human body in motion. It focuses exclusively on the mechanics of movement, using footage of world-class athletes to illustrate human movement at the extremes of perfection. Videos of athletes were processed through custom software to create evolving abstract forms that explore the relationships between the human body and its movements through time and space.

This generative animation and interactive installation will display at the Museum from 9 March – 2 September.

An electron microscope operates in a vacuum, firing a beam of electrons at the object under observation. Staved of air, bombarded by electrons, a tick does fine, thank you very much. When it was all over, it walked away to infest some poor chap, maybe taking its revenge on the researcher.

At lift off, the shuttle burns over 1000 gallons of liquid propellants and 20,000 pounds of solid fuel every second to generate nearly seven and a half million pounds of thrust. What does all this sound like? This video is shot from the solid rocket booster perspective and here’s what it would look and sound like if you were able to ride the shuttle while sitting on one of the rocket boosters.

It’s fascinating to watch the speed increase to 2963 mph and the rocket reach the 28 miles height when the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) separate and tumble back to Earth. Soon thereafter, at the 5:04 mark, the External Tank (ET) separates and we watch it fall back and splash into the ocean. From travelling at more than 2000 mph, parachutes deploy at around 210 mph [6:47] and the ET finally splashes into the sea at around 50 mph [7:22]. Then it just floats there waiting for recovery — and the cameras keep ticking and you can see one of the SRB fall into the sea nearby. [wikipedia]

To launch the iPad version of the IKEA-catalogue in Norway, advertising agency smfb created a new IKEA product called “BERÖRA”. It’s a sewing kit with a special conductive silver thread to sew into the index finger of your favourite gloves or mittens. It is the silver thread that conducts electricity from your finger to the touch screen of the iPad. No need to remove gloves or mittens to operate the iPad now. Or your digital camera equipped with touch screen LCD. Brillant! 12,000 kits sold out in 2 weeks. Only in Norway. Hopefully we’ll see this campaign in N.A. and elsewhere in the world (wherever IKEA stores operate) soon.

Here’s a free tip to IKEA marketing dept.: why not start a (free) “Learn Swedish” kit? I am surprised that with all the traffic that IKEA gets in its stores and online that more of us have not learned a smattering of Swedish yet. Simple words like Thank-you, Please, Right, Left, Help, etc.

NASA used the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to catalog the entire infrared sky, showing more than a half billion stars, galaxies and other objects. WISE launched Dec. 14, 2009, and mapped the entire sky in 2010, collecting more than 2.7 million images. It took images at four infrared wavelengths of light, capturing everything from nearby asteroids to distant galaxies.

In all, more than 15 trillion bytes of data were processed and the individual WISE exposures have been combined into an atlas of more than 18,000 images covering the sky. In addition, a catalog lists the infrared properties of more than 560 million individual objects found in the images. Many of them have never been seen before.